Word Wenches

What We're Reading in March!

Mary Jo here, and as always, the Word Wenches are reading diverse and wonderful things! 

First up is Nicola Cornick:

This month I’ve been reading The Silent Fountain by Victoria Fox. It’s dual time frame novel set in the present day and in the 1970s (which seems almost contemporary to someone my age!) and spans London, Tuscany and Hollywood. Victoria Fox is better known for her blockbusters in the style of Jackie Collins and this is something completely different from her. It’s being described as a gothic suspense novel like Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and it certainly has some dark overtones, but I loved it for the atmospheric descriptions and the beautiful writing. Victoria really does write with such elegance and style; it’s a joy to read.

The Silent Fountain is a big, deep novel about secrets and relationships. There is love and romance, of course – a book usually needs to have those elements to hook me – but also mystery, drama, suspense… A fabulous read if you like books that entwine two complex and fascinating story threads. At the moment The Silent Fountain is only available in the UK but it is published in the US by MIRA in October.

An Early Role Model

Susan here, looking at early influences in reading – what influenced us, what books and characters captured us, and how did that shape us as readers, as people, as writers, as storytellers? (Writers or not – we are all storytellers of one sort or another!) Some of the books I loved best as a little girl will be familiar: Secret Garden, Pollyanna and Little Women, Heidi, The Silver Skates, The Velveteen Rabbit, several versions of fairy tales ... the list goes on, and you would know the books on it--because chances are, these are the stories you read and loved too. (I am revising an early Wench classic post today – editing and updating, as authors are wont to do. Our early posts are handy when time is short -- and when there's a topic worth returning to for more discussion!)

I sobbed my eyes out over Heidi, Pollyanna, The Five Little Peppers, and Little Women (though, unlike Joey on "Friends," I didn’t have to hide it in the freezer because Beth was sick and it was upsetting!), and I laughed over others, like Otis Spofford and Ellen Tebbits. I was fascinated and intrigued by A Wrinkle in Time, though some books just did not appeal (Anne of Green Gables never interested me much). Many of these stories I read again and again, voraciously. It was as if I lived with them, learned from them, grew with them. I loved them like family and had to return to that comfort and that space to soak in more of it.

But of all these books, what characters appealed to me most? Who did I want to be, who helped me develop my thinking, who caught my loyalty and affection and admiration? More than one character for different reasons, of course, but -- Pippi!

Pippi Longstocking was my girl.

 

Paws on the Page

Susanna here, writing more slowly this morning because of the dog on my lap.

Stella is a recent addition to our family, filling the hole in my writing room left by the passing of Samson five years ago, and after being with us only a couple of months she’s already fallen in with our routine and made herself at home.
 
Which got me thinking that, in all the books I’ve written, there are pets. My characters are always sharing scenes with cats or favourite horses or a bird, and more often than not you’ll find a dog that features somewhere in the story.

Pillow Talk

Nicola here, and today I am musing on pillows. Repetitive strain injury is an occupational hazard of a writer’s life, or indeed anyone who uses a keyboard. It can affect people in all sorts of jobs who, as the words suggest, use the same movements frequently. In an attempt to deal with my RSI, which gives me neck, shoulder and back pain, I’ve taken all sorts of measures, trying to get my desk at the exact correct height and my chair as well, foot rests, wrist rests, and special pillows in bed at night to support my head.

When I first set off down the special pillow route I tried one that was filled with spelt, a grain more commonly found in bread! It was supposed to adjust perfectly to the shape of the head and neck to maintain the spine in a correct line. However I found it just went flat! So then I tried one with foam but didn’t get on with that either. In the end I’ve gone back to a nice feather pillow.

A Man For All Seasons

Andrea/Cara here, As a unabashed history geek, I’m always excited when I discover the in-depth story of a fascinating figure from the past about whom I don’t know much—and I’m even more excited when in the process I also gain a broader perspective on the world in which the individual lived and how his or her achievements helped shape it. So I’m here to gush about my newest historical hero heartthrob—Alexander von Humboldt.

Today, most of us know dare only vaguely familiar with his name as an ocean current located somewhere off the Pacific coast of South America. But in his day, he was arguably one of the most famous men in the world. As the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV said, he was “the greatest man since the Deluge.” On his death, newspapers around the world proclaimed how fortunate they all were to have lived in the “Age of Humboldt.”

Scientist, Poet, Educator, Artist, Philosopher. The details of Humboldt’s extraordinary personality and accomplishments are brought to life in The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf. His insatiable curiosity, his meticulous recording of data and details of the natural world—from the tiniest insects to the faraway stars—his lyrical prose that expressed the wondrous joy at seeing Life as a great web of interconnected threads, literally changed the way the 19^th century world looked at science. From Charles Darwin to Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman, both scientists and artists were inspired by Humboldt, who today is being re-recognized as the Father of Ecology.

Ten Years of Retreating

Anne here, and no, I'm not talking about a very slow military retreat, but my annual writing retreat with a group of eight other writers. I'm away in Queensland, on retreat at the moment, and we're celebrating our tenth anniversary. That's ten years with the same group, spending a week together each year writing, talking writing and publishing, sharing our knowledge and socializing, and I thought I'd like to reflect on that.

It started initially as a way to support writers we knew who were relatively isolated, especially from other romance writers. We were all published, but our editors were overseas, in London and New York. We didn't all know each other at the first retreat, and we came together a little cautiously, wondering if this would work.

We came from four Australian states and one person from New Zealand. To give you an idea of the distances, the writer from Far North Queensland lived as far from the next published romance writer as the distance from London to Moscow. Ten years later, a couple of the original members of the group have dropped out, but we're still from four Australian states, and the NZer has spent the past year living in a beautiful medieval town in the south of France. And we're still going strong: for all of us, this retreat each March remains a highlight of our writing year.

St. Paddy's Day!

Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit! Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you!

Susan here - it's a great day for celebrating the Irish and Ireland, which I’m celebrating too—one of my grandfathers was Irish, the son of an Irish minister from County Cork who came over with his family; and I have Irish on both maternal and paternal sides. According to my DNA tests and under-construction genealogy tree, I’m about 40% Irish, the rest Scottish, English, French, Italian and a smidge of Jewish way, way back. (If you haven’t done DNA testing, the results are fascinating and full of surprises.)

Today is a day for the Irish, a day for luck and pride and wearin’ o’ the green as we celebrate whatever percentage of Irish we have—and if it’s not in your blood, perhaps it’s in your heart and in your fondness for the incomparable, the irrepressible, the charming, the feisty, the poetic, the profound and unforgettable Irish and their beautiful land.

Beginning as a celebration of St. Patrick’s life, St. Patrick's Day has come a long way. Patrick was a 5th century British son of a noble house, enslaved and brought to Ireland; he escaped, yet returned once he became a priest, bringing Christianity to the pagan Celtic Irish. From that humble start grew the myth of clearing the snakes (pagan beliefs?) out of Ireland, and from there to wearing green, displaying shamrocks, drinking green beer, singing Irish songs in pubs, eating Irish fare, dyeing an entire river green (Chicago) and generally loving all things Irish or even remotely Irish for one fine day. And it has become, it seems, even a bigger deal here in America than in Ireland, with the Irish prime minister visiting the U.S. this week and talking about the importance of America to Irish immigrants--and the importance of Irish immigrants to America. 

So today I’m wearing my green—including a favorite good-luck bracelet of Connemara marble and Irish silver—and it’s a perfect day for the Wenches to show our love of all things Irish, shared below.

And we hope you all will share your Irish favorites with us! 

Pat Rice

I've always assumed I was part Irish. My mother was left in an orphanage as an infant, but her birth certificate listed a McDonald as the father and the part of New York City used as an address was predominantly Irish immigrants at the time. The mother's family name was traditionally English, but the census bureau listed her home country as Ireland, so the chances were pretty high. But the real tell-tale signs were my mother's gorgeous red hair and freckles. I unfortunately did  not get the red, although my children did. I recently had a DNA analysis done and lo and behold, I'm 48% Irish. I know my father's family, and they're definitely not from Ye Olde Sod, so my grandmother's traditional English name is meaningless. I am the direct descendant of Irish immigrants--which has to be my favorite Irish thing.

Spring Cleaning

Really stupid daffodils

Joanna here:

I’m in my fiercely picturesque little house in the mountains, not so much snowed in as iced in. When others can comment smugly on being under a foot or two of snow, I have to tag along behind saying, "I know it looks like only a little snow. But it’s ice. Solid, serious ice!" I punctuate.

Which brings us to Spring Cleaning .The vernal equinox is March 21 and charging down upon us at a great rate, even if some few of us Wenches are doing the blizzard thing.

My daffodils all up and down the woods were getting to be a big, sassy, yellow crop. They are now all frozen except for about a dozen I’ve got inside. I ran up and down the hill in freezing winds to save them. This morning I stopped by the pots of fuchsia in the kitchen and told them they should be durned glad I didn’t decide to put them out on the back porch last week when everything was all warm and enticing out there.

But I digress. Spring Cleaning.

For me this is moving al the furniture and sweeping underneath. It’s slapping a dab of paint on the door jambs where my cat sharpens her claws in the wood.(Twenty-two million trees outside and she comes inside to sharpen her claws.) And I’m metaphorically mudwrestling with all the computer problems I’ve been living with so patiently.

 

 

Too many books? Impossible.

Pat says: 

Mary Jo's garden

Spring cleaning? What is this called spring cleaning? Every so often I get it in my head to paint a room or move the furniture and cleaning happens, but that’s seldom in spring. In spring, I’m outside in the garden. So maybe spring cleaning is hauling out dead leaves, spreading weed emergent killer, and planting pretties? Although this spring, after a rainy winter, we hired a window cleaner. All the glass in the house is now sparkly. But note, I didn’t do it!

 

 

We go to Anne. She’s nice and warm and I am all envious.

Anne here.

Even though it's autumn in Australia (we don't say "fall" -- it's always "autumn") I'm approaching a kind of spring cleaning in that I'm

What? You have clutter?

preparing (in between bouts of writing) to pack up my house and move out, in order for it to be renovated. Years of precious clutter are going to have to go. I'm a pack-rat, and even though I've battled this tendency for ages, teaming up from time to time with Flylady, and Marie Konda, and Feng Shui and think I've done pretty well, as I look around me, I have to confess I've only scraped the surface.

Still, there is a book to be written and a deadline creeping towards me, so that's my priority for now. If I can't manage to write AND declutter and pack up the house, I'll have to pay someone to stuff it all in boxes and store it, and I'll sort it out the other way. Like that old TV show -- Your Life On The Lawn, where they'd empty a family's household goods and furniture -- everything! --- into the back yard, and then they'd only take back inside the things they really wanted.

Still, I'd rather do it all myself before I have to move. I don't have a date yet, so there is still a possibility I can finish a book AND pack up a house. Do you believe in fairies? No, me neither.

 

Susan says:

Right now the only one doing spring cleaning around here is my husband, who's outside as I write this, pushing the snowblower up and down the driveway. So much for spring. But soon, like the the trees and flowers, we'll all be wanting to freshen up our look after the gray winter drear, emerging and blooming a little in the warmer temps and sunshine. For me, first off, I want to get fresh air in, stale air out. I like to clean a little, paint a bit, move some furniture--I want things to look and feel different once spring arrives. Really I'm not a stickler about a clean, organized home (as a mom to three boys, my housekeeping standards sank long ago!). I'll email the garden guys to do the yard clean up, sign on for a boatload of mulch, visit the garden centers and bring home some new plants and get those in--beyond that, I'm not much of a gardener (the allergies remind me of that each year!).  

 

Spring can be so energizing and lovely, but deadlines take precedence over seasonal changes. If there's time, I might tackle my office and sort out the papers and books, dust off the knicky-noos, or clean the closets, haul some things off to Good Will and generally straighten up. But spring cleaning is often an ideal more than a reality. This spring I'm working toward a deadline--so if I get anything done beyond opening the doors to let the fresh air dance around and blow out the old air, I'm doing good! The rest can wait a bit!    

 

Andrea admits cleaning isn't something she thinks about much:

 

Spring cleaning . . . hmmm, does that mean we only have to think about scrubbing and vacuuming four times a year? Now that’s an idea I could readily embrace! I am  not one of those people who subscribe to the “cleanliness is next to godliness” view of the world.  I do like things moderately neat, but a wee bit of dust here and there peacefully coexist. I do take a rather odd satisfaction in reordering my clothes drawers for the seasons. Winter sweaters go into storage closets as I delight in neatly folding spring top in lovely orderly piles. They look so organized . . . for about a day. My idea of luxury is having house elves, who would joyfully come in and scrub the bathroom every week. (Teddy heard me grumbling and has volunteered to take on those duties, in addition to copyediting myy manuscripts. I think he deserves an extra pot of honey.)

 

Mary Jo joins in with:

I've known people for whom spring cleaning is a near sacred rite, using toothbrushes to scrub grout, moving furniture to see what lurks below, and excavating cabinets and closets. 

I am not one of that breed.  I like to maintain a general orderliness, but to be honest, if I can't see dust and murky accumulations, they don't bother me.  I'm on the short side, so I am blithely unconcerned about the tops of bookcases and the dusty moldings.  My house is large, and many strange and curious things can migrate into hidden places.  On the whole, I believe in letting them rest in peace. 

Spring is often a time for general medical and dental appointments for me and the cats.  It's also a time to get the deck pressure washed and to think about what flowers to plant in the boxes out there. 

I notice flowers a great deal more than dust. <G> 

 

What about you? Are you planning an overhaul of the house, or your body, or your computer right about now as the seasons change?

 

 

Midwifery for Men

Pat here: I’m still in the process of moving from one side of town to the other and everything is still in boxes except my computer. Which is convenient since I have a new book coming out Tuesday—AURA OF MAGIC, the fourth in my Malcolm and Ives Unexpected Magic series—and I really need to tell people about it. There’s an excerpt and buy links on my website.

Since I like mixing things up, this time the scientific protagonist is the heroine, Brighid, the Countess of Carstairs. She comes from a long line of physicians and has been trained by her family to the same standards as the men who were allowed to attend university--except, of course, she was expected to marry. Devoted to the village where she grew up, she obediently wed the highest ranking aristocrat in town, then continued her family's medical practice—illegally.

Foreign Editions

by Mary Jo

Romance is read around the world in many, many languages.  For a writer, it's a huge benefit if one's native tongue is widely spoken and widely read because that means there's a sizable publishing business: writing groups, editors, publishers, agents. All the paraphernalia that help aspiring writers learn and grow and become published.

I've often thought how hard it is to be a very talented writer in a small language group where there isn't the structure to support budding talents.  (To the left are two editions of LOVING A LOST LORD, Japanese on the left, Indonesian on the right.)

I give thanks that I'm a native speaker of (American) English, which is spoken and read around the world. Lots and lots of romances are published in English, so many foreign publishers find it more efficient to buy rights to English language books and translate them into their own language because there just aren't as many original titles available in Polish or Korean or whatever.  (Harlequin, the romance giant, does its own translations and distribution.  According to Wikipedia, in a recent year that was 26 languages and 106 countries.  That a LOT of romances!)

Young and Old

He’s just little. He fits in the palm of my hand. And for more than a decade he hung near my bed in the cottage we rented each summer. Each morning his face was the first one I saw upon waking; at night when I reached out to switch off the lamp there he’d be again, steadily gazing with calm, thoughtful eyes at something just beyond my left shoulder.

We only had that cottage for a week each summer, but I grew attached to my young friend. I didn’t know whether he’d been an actual person or simply the created illustration of an artist, and apart from a faint stamp on the cardboard backing of his frame that let me know he had been framed in Germany, I didn’t know exactly where or when he had been painted.

Faking It!

Andrea/Cara here, I saw this 1894 cartoon from Punch magazine the other day, and it was a good reminder that our current media brouhaha over “fake news” and “alternative facts” are, alas, nothing new. History shows that from time we first learned to communicate with each other, be it in telling stories around the fire, painting pictograms on cave walls, or writing on a clay tablet, we’ve tended to shape our narratives based on the view through our own tinted spectacles! (As Winston Churchill said, “History will be kind to me because I intend to write it.”

There have been some particularly outrageous times of media hype and spin in history—the 1890s in America is one prime example. Hearst’s newspapers pretty much ignited the Spanish-American War though its outright lies. The term “yellow journalism”, which refers to outrageous, sensationalist headlines just to sell papers, was created in response the press manipulation of public opinion.

The Georgian and Regency eras had their own excesses, too. In doing a little research, I discovered they, too, were well skilled in the art of fake news and inciting scandal. The 18th century saw the advent of “paragraph” men. It seems that many of the newspapers were based on simply compiling snippets, or paragraphs, supplied by people who frequented the London clubs, coffeehouses and social activities. Some were paid, and some did it just to be able to sway public opinion.

The Australian Romance Readers Convention

Anne here, just back from the Australian Romance Readers Convention in Melbourne, my home town.

It was a lovely convention — nowhere near as big as RT in the USA — more like 200 avid romance readers and a large group of romance authors flying in from all corners of Australia, and a few from other countries.

There were three keynote speakers, Courtney Milan and Kristen Callihan from the USA and Kylie Scott, from Queensland, who each delivered speeches on their journey to publication, and gave their view on why romance matters. It was interesting, as they each came up with the topic independently, and the three very different speeches had much in common.

From Pirates to Press Gangs - Georgian Portland

Nicola here. A couple of weeks ago I visited Portland, one of the most wild and remote parts of the UK. It lies off the south coast of the county of Dorset, opposite the famous seaside town of Weymouth and is a “tied island” connected to the mainland by a causeway. Back in the 18^th and 19^th centuries though the best way to approach was by boat and even that was very dangerous with the tides, currents, and lurking rock shoals that surround the island.

The day we arrived was extremely stormy with the sea lashing the famous Chesil Beach and it was easy to see how isolated you might feel in the depths of a Regency winter. Despite its remoteness however, Portland has been inhabited since the Stone Age, with the Romans settling there and the first Viking raids in England recorded to have taken place there in 787AD. The castle, built by Henry VIII to guard against French invasion, still stands and is open to visit. Once a part of the Portland Naval base and off-limits to the public, it now stands on the rejuvenated harbour.

Portland really came into its own in the 17^th century with the opening of the limestone quarries on the island. Sir Christopher Wren used six million tons of the fine white stone to rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1665 including such buildings as the Banqueting House, St Paul’s Cathedral and Buckingham House. The quarrying families such as the Gilberts who owned property on the island grew rich through the stone trade and built themselves very nice houses such as "Queen Anne's House" in the village of Fortuneswell.

One of the Gilbert family was also the architect of the church of St George, built to a stunning Georgian design with box pews, each with their own door and latch, and three galleries. The lives of the inhabitants of this wild island are recorded on the tombstones of the churchyard. Sailors, fishermen and pirates have their graves here, as do prisoners from the nearby gaol. Shipwrecks were so common that only the ladies and officers tended to be buried in the churchyards; everyone else was buried on the beach where their bodies were found. Plunder of the wrecks was also common.

At St George's a very unusual memorial to Mary Way and William Lano notes that they were murdered by a press gang in 1803. This event was known as the Easton Massacre where a crew of a Navy vessel illegally tried to press male members of the town into naval service. When the townspeople opposed them, the ship's captain fired on them and killed three people, injuring Mary Way who also later died of her wounds. Four of the ships officers were tried for murder but acquitted. The wording of the memorial, however, leaves no room for misunderstanding; this was murder and was recorded as such.

There were other casualties of the wild weather over the years as well, including a lighthouse keeper who was struck by lightning on Chesil Beach in 1858 and a man whose house fell down on top of him in the Great Storm of 1824.

A number of the gravestones have the skull and crossbones depicted on them, not as might be imagined at first glance, because they are pirates’ graves but because from the 17^th century this symbol was used to denote mortality. Pirates borrowed the symbol because they liked the way that it struck the fear of death into people. However, once the pirates started to use it the Church decided it was no longer appropriate for burials and it was phased out in the later 18^th century!

Whilst Portland may have been remote and lawless, across the bay was a very different place, the popular Georgian seaside resort of Weymouth. With its sheltered bay and golden sands, Weymouth was the ideal centre for a spot of sea bathing. By the mid 18^th century there were wooden bathing houses on the bay and in 1773 Stacie’s Hotel and assembly rooms opened. The photo shows a Georgian bathing machine that still stands on the sea front.

As part of the plan to popularise the resort, the roads were paved and improved, watchmen patrolled the streets and kept the peace. The first guidebook was produced in 1782 by the postmistress, Mrs Delamotte, and the famous Harvey’s Improved Guide followed in 1800. These listed all the entertainments on offer as well as the hotels and lodging houses, many of which are still standing today, including the elegant red brick of the Royal Hotel.

It was in 1789 that King George III first came to Weymouth to recuperate from a bout of illness and he liked the town so much that he continued to visit until 1805. The royal seal of approval brought even more rich and influential visitors flocking to the seaside town.

Wild beaches or the delights of sea-bathing? If you were visiting Dorset in the Regency period would you have preferred mingling with the pirates on Portland or high society in Weymouth?